Seinosuke Shinden: Chapter 1
100 kilometres in. As he continued crossing the dense forest foliage. Seinosuke comes across a barren section of land within this forest labyrinth. There appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary here. However, with his sharp gaze, he noticed a peculiar object standing within the centre of the barren space's circumference. Upon closer inspection, this object appeared to be an irregular shaped pillar made of rock. Nothing really out of the ordinary. At first glance that is. It seemed way too odd to have a structure like this in the middle of some forest, especially far from any form of civilisation, and it didn't appear to be some form of shrine either. There had to be some purpose to this, unless somebody left this here to confuse people. Seinosuke reached his left arm out and touched the stone pillar with his hand. Having some form of an idea, he charged the pillar with some of his chakra, hoping that would it least do something. The pillar suddenly became shrouded in an immense golden light, lighting up the darkened night sky, bright enough to be seen from quite a distance away. A sensation that felt like his corneas were burning, Seinosuke quickly obscured his eyes with his right arm. The entire ordeal felt like he was staring close up towards a miniature star. The barren ground that stood suddenly became marked by glowing lines, and immediately after, a pathway was formed, leading underground. The light that originated from the pillar started to dim until it no longer glowed, and the lines that marked the ground also disappeared. "Good god. Whoever made this could have at least turned down this god forsaken brightness." Seinosuke rubbed his eyes to regain his vision and noticed the pathway leading to somewhere underground. "And to think that nobody noticed... I guess people had much better things to do than play with a big rock." Without much thought, he stepped foot on the pathway and followed it down into the ground. As expected, it was pitch black. Seinosuke could barely see what was in front of him and had to resort to using his hand as a guide to walk through this blacked out tunnel. He eventually got fed up and resorted to another method. In his right hand, he channeled his chakra through it and muttered the name of a technique. "Fire Release: Demon Lantern." The chakra transmuted into a fireball in his right hand, forming into something resembling a demon's head. The light given off by the flames lit up the passageway, giving Seinosuke a much better field of vision. With the flames, he could check for any detours in the path and if found, mark them with certain types of metal rods so he couldn't get lost within the labyrinth. Not once however has he encountered any deviations in the pathway. It was nothing but a straightforward path. And it seemed to go on forever with no end in sight. Eventually what seemed to take hours of walking did Seinosuke see what appeared to be light at the end of the path. A rather ominous light that is. Seinosuke dispelled the fireball and grabbed the handle of his sword, on guard for anything that might come his way. He cautiously walked towards the path's end. "!?" What Seinosuke saw left him in utter disbelief. An expansive view of what appeared to be outer space, though extremely distorted, with floating orbs of what appeared to be stars. What he saw shocked him further as each of these so called "stars" appeared to contain a series of civilisations.